These Portals are Instantaneous
“There sure are a lot of travelers lately,” remarks the gatekeeper as I take a step through the
whirling pink portal. My destination: Lion’s Arch, an active shipping port town set alongside the sea. The
town was once destroyed by a great flood, but citizens from across the land of Tyria worked to rebuild it
from the wreckage of ships and scattered materials washed ashore.
Great masts with tattered red and green and ivory sails mark buildings and bridges. Towering
wood posts hold torches that burn indefinitely and lines of lanterns shaped like fishes hang across paths.
A symphony of sound follows me as I gallop through the town. My cotton candy pink boots clop against
the stone pathways and my matching masquerade skirt swings back and forth like a pendulum. I run
towards a massive cargo ship that has been painted emerald and gold and repurposed as a common
trading post for travelers. I step inside the hull of the ship and the wooden deck is covered in ruby red
carpet lined in a gold lace pattern. Matching curtains drape from the ceiling to the floor of the elaborate
beached vessel.
Nothing as extravagant as Lion’s Arch could ever be man-made, but yet, it is.
At the center of town is a great lion statue posed mid-pounce, on his hind legs, rearing his hefty
stone paws. People from all over the world stand around the statue – chatting, making deals, looking for
fellow travelers to join on adventures. And when a destination has been decided, they dash away to the
nearby gateway hub, the line of swirling pink portals.
A young woman approaches the gatekeeper, “How long will it take me to travel to Divinity’s
Reach?”
“No time at all ma’am. These portals are instantaneous.”
Tali’Zorah vas Normandy claws at my pant leg, digging her nails into my shin, jolting my hands
from the keyboard and mouse. I notice the time – it is 2:00AM, already? I yawn and rub my eyes. She
hops from the floor, to my thigh, to my desk and takes her usual seat: directly in front of the screen.
“Tali, really? Right there?” She stares into the screen, watching the figures of people running back and
forth. And she places her tiny white paws against the flat monitor, trying to catch a person or two.
“Alright Tali, it’s late, let’s go to bed,” I say to my kitten and the empty room.
With the flicker of my luminescent computer monitor, the statue, Lion’s Arch, and all of the
people of Tyria fade away. Only to be replaced by the cold, blunt reality of the bland apartment
bedroom surrounding me.
I’m encompassed by white walls and a tan carpet, white ceiling, white window blinds. I’m
suddenly aware of the growing mess on my desk: a stack of notebooks and scattered pens and
incomplete homework assignments, the remnants of tomato soup coating the bottom of a white plastic
bowl. Engulfed by the scents of stale coffee and kitty litter, I flip the light switch. Everything goes dark;
deadlines and chores fill my mind, while somewhere else, travelers are being transported to faraway
lands.
“So what did you do over the weekend?” my mother chirps over the phone during our weekly
call; every Monday the same question, without fail, for the last four years of my life since I left her nest
and moved 250 miles away to study Chemical Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
“Relaxed, played video games, did homework.” I recite, week after week.
I stopped trying to explain Guild Wars to my mom a long time ago because it all sounds really
nonsensical outside of the digital world. “Well Mom, you see, I fought a few dragons with my magical
fire staff and then went to Caudecus’s Manor to help him with his growing bandit problem. Yeah.”
“But why, Robin, why?” I knew she would ask. Even though my mother used to engage in the
casual game session of Dr. Mario or Tetris, I imagine that she still shakes her head and secretly questions
my sanity when I’m talking about my magical adventures.
“Well, Mom, I have to protect the people of Tyria from the growing threat of risen hoards and
plus the mobs drop sweet loot and I want to get this awesome looking armor set.”
It just doesn’t make any practical sense.
The physical truth is that I spend hours of my free time glued to a keyboard and mouse, running
through a fictional world, killing fictional beasts in order to get fictional items and save fictional people.
So I get it; I get why my skeptical mom might say, “Wow, that sounds like a serious waste of
time and energy. Why do you keep doing that?”
The real truth is that it is an interest that it started a long time ago; long before I succumbed to
the stresses of college courses and long before game developers were creating massive million dollar
productions. My time dedicated to video games is rooted in a fascination that exists as far back as my
memory extends. A passion that only grew as 8-bit graphics became 16 and 64. And as I watched the
game controller evolve from a rectangular chunk of plastic with five rudimentary buttons to a motion
sensing camera that translates arm flails into on-screen feedback. It’s a love that was only reaffirmed
when “Video Game Design” became a legitimate college degree and “The Art of Video Games” became
an exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC, holding a set of rooms down
the hall from brilliant Nineteenth-Century paintings.
All of this development occurred simultaneously with my own growth. Now the games I play
have deep stories, voice acted characters, vivid worlds with entire histories, and they require problem
solving skills and strategy. When I was just a kid, the games were simple. They were two dimensional
and straightforward; get from point A to point B, much like my life back then. But as flat as those worlds
were, it was exploration and adventure and it was all very exciting and new.
The games are a portal back to that time; recreating the magic and wonder I felt from the first
moment I witnessed that with one little box, connected by wire, you could control an entirely different
world.
Lying on my stomach on the tan, raggedy old carpet of the living room; chin resting against my
palms. Staring at a glowing screen, quietly entranced as if I've dissipated into the floor calmly. I am a
mystified observer.
My brother, Kevin, holds a piece of plastic, clenched between his fingers. A wire, a black wire
leads from his hands to a gray box. His left thumb moves to the right and a pixelated Bugs Bunny on the
screen follows the pressure of his hands, moving to the right across a colorful scene.
A lime green platform of grass, an aqua blue sky, and a fuzzy gray bunny.
Kevin pushes a red button with his right thumb, again and again, and the bunny hops along the
screen in perfect synchronization until they seem to become one entity. He jumps for a floating carrot in
a square box over and over. And with growing frustration Kevin says, “Mom, I can't get this thing. Can
you help me?”
He passes the plastic rectangle to my mother and now the black wire connects her to the
screen, to Bugs Bunny, and she jumps and jumps for the little orange carrot box.
This hazy, faded vision is my oldest memory - the beginning of my waking life, the start of my
conscious memory. Just thinking of it reminds me of times before my life was consumed by college
courses, figuring out how to pay the bills, and deciding what I want to do with the rest of my life. It
brings me back to the weekends of my childhood growing up in Parma, Ohio.
Every Saturday morning of my blissful suburban childhood began at about 9:00 A.M when my
father would drag my brother and me out of bed and feed us burnt pancakes that were always shaped
in irregular blobs. And by 10:00AM, we were dumped off at the Holy Spirit Byzantine Catholic Church of
Parma to attend our weekly religion classes and give my father a break from our ruckus.
At church, my brother and the rest of the older kids would help prepare communion bread for
the following morning’s service while we little sprouts gathered in makeshift classrooms divided by
cubicle walls. I don’t remember much of those times at Holy Spirit except that we were told to color
pictures and speak of the things for which we were thankful, and a church volunteer preached to us
about being nice to each another. I was always just quietly fidgeting in my seat, doing as I was told, and
patiently waiting for it to be over.
At about noon, my father would pick us up and that is when the weekend truly began. The
moment we walked out of that church was pure unhinged freedom. My brother and I would hop into
the car and my dad would turn up the speakers, blasting an old Temptations cassette tape, windows
rolled down, cruising down West 54th, fresh air blowing my tangled brown hair as I stuck my head out
the window like a caged puppy on a car ride. We whizzed past the cemetery and the little Polish diners
that always radiated the scent of homemade buttery pierogies into the air. And then we flew by the side
streets filled with rows of close-packed houses, and headed towards Brookpark Road.
Our first stop was always a special candy store called B.A. Sweetie. It was a little place tucked in
the corner of a shopping plaza, hardly visible from the street which only made it feel more like our little
secret. From the outside it appeared to be a tiny boutique, but when you opened the door it was like
stepping into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. The inside of the store was huge, like a warehouse with
row upon row of tall steel shelves holding any type of candy you could possibly imagine. Pixie Stix and
Fun Dip and candy necklaces, wax lips and Razzles and novelty sour candy toilets with lollypop plungers.
Our favorites were always the candy buttons and the candy cigarettes; so much so that our father
eventually bought an entire case of candy cigarette packs to stow away in the high-up cupboard in the
kitchen.
After securing our weekend hoard of sugary goodness, we made our stop at the little video
rental place on the corner of Pleasant Valley and Ridge Road, a tiny rental shop in the sea of local
businesses and massive chain stores that cluttered the areas that used to have grass.
I don’t remember the rental store ever having a name, although it probably had a generic neon
sign that said “Movies! Games! We Are Open!” beckoning in traffic from the busy intersection. The
building is a CheckSmart loan place now, next to a CVS, and like most of the small businesses in my
hometown, the rental store has been long gone. But however nameless and nonexistent as it is now,
that little shop was the most magical place of my childhood. Every weekend, at a dollar or two a pop, my
brother and I rented adventures in the form of little gray cartridges. We borrowed experiences for a day
or two at a time – worlds to explore, challenges to face, characters to meet, and brutal competitions to
duke out.
Some days my brother and I could agree on only one of the old favorites that we rented time
after time like Biker Mice from Mars or Looney Toons B-Ball. But every once in awhile on a rare and
wonderful Saturday, my father would let us both pick our own games, and then I was able to roam free
and take a risk on a cartridge with a funny name or a catchy slogan or totally rad cover art. Those were
the times that I quenched my bizarre obsession with fishing by picking up Bass Masters Classic or
became severely disappointed when Mario’s Time Machine ended up being a deceptively educational
game.
But whatever gray cartridge we went home with, it was going to be a good weekend; a weekend
of sibling bickering and sugar highs, new experiences and exploration through parallel universes.
From those fond weekends of my childhood to my life now, it is hard to remember a time when
video games weren’t present, following me along, coinciding with the events of my growth. But unlike
the painful truths of growing up, there are no bad memories of video games – only happy moments.
Like the Christmas when Santa brought me Dance Dance Revolution for the original Xbox and
everybody in my (usually shy and reserved) family suspended their apprehensions of looking silly and
gave “that weird dance game with the arrows” a try. Even my elderly grandmother, with oxygen tubes
connected to her nose, got up off the couch and stomped the floor to a techno beat while her oxygen
tank puff puffed along.
And the countless weekends of my childhood playing The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario 3
with the boy across the street when it was too dark or rainy to go outside and dig for worms. And the
yearly New Year's Eve tradition with my best friends in elementary school of playing games like Prince of
Persia and Animal Crossing until midnight while we listened to the Rosie O'Donnell Christmas CD and
drank non-alcoholic strawberry daiquiris. Through the tough times of high school, playing Wind Waker
alone, and my first years of college huddling up in a dorm room playing Super Smash Bros for Nintendo
64 games or Call of Duty with my floor mates.
More recently, I went back to Parma to visit my family for a week while on break from classes,
and I brought my Wii and some of my games including Guitar Hero. And the moment my mom gave it a
try, she was hooked. After a few songs, my mom developed a bizarre determination to conquer
“Through the Fire and Flames,” the longest and most difficult song in the game. My mother sat on the
floor for hours, cheeks burning red as she frantically pressed green, red, yellow, orange and blue buttons
on a plastic guitar to produce the riffs of a power metal song. And whenever I asked for a turn, she
transformed to a childlike state and begged, “Just one more song, one more try!” And so I just nodded
and laughed and cheered my mother on as she slowly grew more and more intensely focused on
accomplishing a meaningless goal.
That moment, fake guitar clenched in her arms, was a moment free from her stresses of working
at a bank and maintaining the house while taking care of three kids, a German shepherd, and my father.
And she was grasping onto it with the ferocity of Herman Li himself, thrashing out a DragonForce guitar
solo.
After many, many tries and a continuous stream of bleeps and bloops, my mother finally
succeeded, barely. Her training prevailed and she completed the seven minute song on the easiest
difficulty setting (but shhh, she still doesn’t really know the difference). My father gave a sigh of relief
that he didn’t have to hear “that damn song” anymore and my mother finally put the plastic guitar down
to go make dinner.
Looking back now at the fuzzy cell phone picture I took of her hilariously fierce expression and
rosy red cheeks while she was playing her heart out, I think she understood my passion for video games
at that moment, even if she didn’t realize it at all; even if she still questions my time in Tyria and calls
every game console “The Nintendo”.
Note: I know this piece is rather long and may exceed the normal length of submissions for Signatures
magazine but I am willing to edit it, or have it edited, for length.